Instead of slating Cameron Diaz for speaking out in favour of childless women,
we should be relieved there are girls who just want to have fun, says
Melissa Kite.

Single, childless and proud of it. That was how one newspaper report described Cameron Diaz last week when the actress revealed that, despite being 36, she was not particularly desperate to have children. The headline might as well have said: Drunk, disorderly and proud of it. "The cheek of the woman!" was the inference.

Cameron Diaz has nothing to be ashamed of

How ironic that in complaining about how women are shunned for deciding against starting a family, Miss Diaz met with precisely the same prejudice in the way her remarks were presented. In speaking honestly about how it felt just fine to be single as her biological clock ticked away inexorably, she was said to have "defended her status". But there was absolutely nothing to defend.

As she talked about her struggle to find a husband, she was described as "Miss Diaz, who has never married". "Miss Diaz, who is not married," would have done. "Never married" subtly suggested she was past it, on the shelf. (Can you imagine a man of 36 being described as "never married"?)

Miss Diaz is right in her general thesis. The rules are clear. You can be single, childless and desperate. You can be single, childless and worried sick about the so-called dangers of having a child in your 40s, as yet another report this weekend highlighted. But single, childless and pleased about it? Well, that really is in poor taste.

It is possibly worse than going off to Malawi to adopt an African child, as Madonna did again last week, because at least this upholds the global belief that women want babies so badly they will go to the ends of the earth to get them.

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In voicing contentedness with a life devoid of the screeching of tiny mouths, Ms Diaz was always going to be treated in some quarters as if she were guilty of anti-social behaviour. In fact, what the film star said was not even shockingly liberal. It was the height of responsible citizenship. She does not want children because she has not found the right man, and because she believes that there are enough people in the world already.

Doubtless, those who view unattached women as symptomatic of a worrying new social trend in "selfishness" will shrug their shoulders at her first point. She ought to make do, they will say. Who does she think she is, seeking marital contentment? But they cannot fail to see the impeccable logic of her second point. On a planet threatened by extinction, the growing desire of some well-educated, self-sufficient women not to have children is evolution's answer to environmental pressure.

Here's a very rough calculation, using statistics on population and environmental matters. If a third of women graduates born in the 1970s are childless in 2010, according to research by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, that's at least one less person being produced by around 350,000 women. The average person, according to the Carbon Trust, emits 10.92 tons of CO2 a year. Multiply that by the number of children not being born in that sample group and you get a saving of 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, and that's only counting one decade's graduate women and assuming they all only had one child. It's a rough estimate, but a compelling one.

We should be thanking "selfish" women who don't want babies. We should be relieved that there are girls who just want to have fun. They are probably all that is stopping our local councils from slapping an even bigger charge on us for residential parking, or the mayors of our cities from resorting to more congestion fees.

Every time you get on a plane to go on holiday say a quick thank-you to women like Miss Diaz. If it weren't for them, you'd probably be paying some hideous new airline tax.